Abstract:Consideration of the effects of domestic politics on international conflict behavior often consists simply of contrasting democracies with non-democracies. One notable exception is work that links economic performance and the use of force. This link has often been addressed through use of a diversionary perspective. In this paper, we argue that more important than the alleged incentive to pursue a rallying effect when times are bad are domestic political and economic factors affecting leaders' constraints, rep… Show more
“…This pattern holds regardless of whether I use each party's overall ideology score (model 1) or only the international components of their manifestos (model 2). The results are consistent with previous studies showing right-wing governments to be more conflictual than left-wing governments (Palmer, London, and Regan 2004;Arena and Palmer 2009;Koch 2009;Koch and Sullivan 2010) and also provide support for Hypothesis 1.…”
How does the hawkish or dovish nature of the domestic opposition in one state influence its own, as well as an international opponent's, negotiating behavior? I show that doves, when negotiating in the presence of a hawkish opposition, have more bargaining leverage in international negotiations. The key is to understand an international opponent's preference to deal with a dove rather than a hawk in future negotiations. I argue that adversaries have an incentive to concede more in negotiations to doves in order to sustain them in office, because failing to give concessions may lead to their replacement by less conciliatory (more hawkish) governments in the future. For this reason, doves are more likely than hawks to extract critical concessions from adversaries. The empirical results support this argument, which altogether suggests that doves are more successful in international negotiations not because they are more conciliatory, but rather because, for domestic reasons, they have greater bargaining leverage to extract counter-concessions from adversaries.
“…This pattern holds regardless of whether I use each party's overall ideology score (model 1) or only the international components of their manifestos (model 2). The results are consistent with previous studies showing right-wing governments to be more conflictual than left-wing governments (Palmer, London, and Regan 2004;Arena and Palmer 2009;Koch 2009;Koch and Sullivan 2010) and also provide support for Hypothesis 1.…”
How does the hawkish or dovish nature of the domestic opposition in one state influence its own, as well as an international opponent's, negotiating behavior? I show that doves, when negotiating in the presence of a hawkish opposition, have more bargaining leverage in international negotiations. The key is to understand an international opponent's preference to deal with a dove rather than a hawk in future negotiations. I argue that adversaries have an incentive to concede more in negotiations to doves in order to sustain them in office, because failing to give concessions may lead to their replacement by less conciliatory (more hawkish) governments in the future. For this reason, doves are more likely than hawks to extract critical concessions from adversaries. The empirical results support this argument, which altogether suggests that doves are more successful in international negotiations not because they are more conciliatory, but rather because, for domestic reasons, they have greater bargaining leverage to extract counter-concessions from adversaries.
“…Some authors suggest that partisan politics helps to explain why certain countries participated and others did not, noting that it was primarily right-of-centre governments that gave political support for the Iraq War (Schuster and Maier 2006). 4 This perspective resonates with recent work on partisanship in relation to the use of force (Rathbun 2004;Arena and Palmer 2009). A different line of reasoning centres on national legislatures and their authority in security policy.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 71%
“…Schmidt 1996; Allan and Scruggs 2004). In recent years a number of studies have enlarged the scope of partisan influence analysis to the field of security studies, reporting systematic differences between left and right parties on substantive questions regarding the use of force (Palmer et al 2004;Rathbun 2004Rathbun , 2007Schuster and Maier 2006;Arena and Palmer 2009).…”
This paper seeks to explain democracies' military participation in the Iraq War. Prior studies have identified institutional and partisan differences as potential explanatory factors for the observed variance. The interaction of institutions and partisanship, however, has gone largely unobserved. I argue that these factors must be analysed in conjunction: institutional constraints presume actors that fulfil their role as veto players to the executive. Likewise, partisan politics is embedded in institutional frames that enable or constrain decision-making. Hence I suggest a comparative approach that combines these factors to explain why some democracies joined the ad hoc coalition against Iraq and others did not. To investigate the interaction between institutions, partisanship and war participation I apply fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The analysis reveals that the conjunction of right-of-centre governments with an absence of both parliamentary veto rights and constitutional restrictions was sufficient for participation in the Iraq War. In turn, for countries where the constitution requires parliamentary approval of military deployments, the distribution of preferences within the legislature proved to be decisive for military participation or non-participation.
“…Related theories based on the assumption of democratic sensitivity to casualties suffer from a similar problem. 3 For example, Arena and Palmer (2009); Ireland and Gartner (2001); Kaarbo and Beasley (2008); Koch (2009); Koch and Gartner (2005) ;Palmer, London, and Regan (2004); and Weeks (2008). 4 The second limitation-the lack of a mechanism to explain how and when the pressure to win will pass from the first leader to a successor (hereafter, "replacement leader")-is not often mentioned in the literature, because scholars rarely focus on wartime leadership changes.…”
A leader's culpability for involving his state in a conflict affects both his war termination calculus and his domestic audience's willingness to punish him if he loses. I define a culpable leader as any leader who either presides over the beginning of a war, or comes to power midwar and shares a political connection with a culpable predecessor. Using a data set created specifically for this study, I find that culpable leaders are more likely than nonculpable ones to achieve favorable war outcomes. I also find that domestic audiences will be willing to punish culpable leaders who lose, yet spare nonculpable leaders who do the same. Taken together, my findings underscore the need to appreciate more fully the role individual leaders play in bringing their states to war.
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